Dear Friends,
Today is Sabbatum Sanctum, Latin for Holy Saturday. It is a day for contemplation and quiet, far different from the days of Holy Week that came before today. We’ve seen Jesus’s triumphant arrival in Jerusalem, Judas’s betrayal, the disciples’ confusion. In a single day, yesterday, on Good Friday, we followed Jesus in and out of Jerusalem as he was captured and arrested; we saw his sham trials before Annas, Caiaphas, and finally, Pilate; we witnessed the torture inflicted on him by Roman soldiers; we felt his pain at his crucifixion; and we learned of his rapid burial in a newly hewn tomb.
And now, all has come to a stop. Today, on this Holy Saturday, there is nothing. There is only profound, nearly bottomless, emptiness. Nothing about this day is recorded in the gospels. So, what scriptures should we read? Our lectionary suggests re-reading the last five verses of yesterday’s very long reading, and indeed, it’s well worth reading John 19:38-42 once again.
This empty day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday has always been a difficult day for me, and maybe for you as well. I’m able to grasp, at least to some extent, the hellishness of Jesus’s passion, and I’m eager for the glory of Easter morning. Today, though, is without events, without comment from Scripture.
For me and for many people of faith, it’s a day to mourn and grieve. This is genuine grief, with all the confusion and inability to think, all the physical, emotional, and spiritual weight that comes with the sorrow of profound loss. Everything seems dull and colorless; my attentiveness to my immediate surroundings and the people I encounter is off somehow. I grieve Jesus as deeply as I grieved my parents when they died, as I grieve all those whom I’ve lost.
But there’s something different about my grief on this day. I am somewhere else. And that’s actually literally true; I’m two thousand years away, suffering the loss of Jesus. As disciples of Jesus, we are called to hear and study his words and teachings and to live our lives as a reflection of his love and compassion. We are also called to know, in our limited human way, the enormity of his sacrifice, and to experience the same grief felt by his first disciples at his crucifixion and death. In order to know their grief, we must live it; we must “lean in” to the confusion and anchorlessness that marks this day. If we’re able to take on at least some of that burden, we may be able to even more fully appreciate his life, teachings, and resurrection.
Jesus’s absence is real to us today. The one to whom who we pray, the one to whom we look for guidance, the one to whom we look for solace, is not here. I’m well aware that I only have to wait until tomorrow’s sunrise, but it feels like the hours are moving far more slowly than usual, another hallmark of grief. The torment of the wait affects all of us communally, and it affects the church as well; even communion isn’t offered on this day. We are meant to bear the load of our great and real emotional heaviness alone, without the succor of spiritual union that is ours through communion…and in this terrible year, through community.
On Maundy Thursday, I wrote of Peter’s inability to comprehend what Jesus was doing when, in his divine servanthood, he washed his disciples’ feet. Jesus said that in a short while Peter would recognize what Jesus had done and more fully comprehend who Jesus truly is. I called that moment of coming comprehension the “hinge event,” the “before and after.” For Peter, for history, for us, reality is divided between Jesus’s earthly life and Christ’s resurrection. Yet today is neither before nor after. Today we rest, unsettled, in-between.
So much of our lives is lived with this in-betweenness. Every year, many high school students have to live for weeks or months through the in-between time after making their applications to their favorite colleges and before receiving word of acceptance or rejection. They’re waiting for their personal hinge moment. A similar process repeats itself with job offers, made so much more complicated now, in an economy that has lost all its predictability and security. Others live in the limbo of in-betweenness while they wait for results of medical tests, including, for some, corona tests. Some live in the nether world of waiting for loved ones to heal from the virus and from other threatening illnesses.
For me, the most intense, fearful time of in-betweenness was in June and July of 2012. As you may know, I have multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. Currently there is no cure, but thankfully, there are new ways of managing and living with it. In late June of 2012, I underwent a bone marrow transplant, also called a stem cell transplant. My doctors intentionally and brutally killed my immune system with a massive dose of chemo and other drugs and then transfused some of my previously harvested stem cells back to me, with hopes that those filtered, cleaner cells would replace and renew my destroyed immune system, so that it could more effectively fight the cancer. After the transplant, my blood counts dropped to zero for just over two weeks. My immune system had effectively been destroyed, and I was susceptible to even the most minor illnesses while waiting, seemingly interminably, for the new cells to “kick in.” Each morning, after my blood tests came back from the lab, one of my incredibly kind nurses would come in and say, “not yet.” Finally, the day came when my nurse was able to whisper, “Yes!” with a huge smile behind her mask. This time of in-betweenness for me was literally a time between death and life. Had the transplant not worked (a 20% possibility), the counts would never have gone up, and I could not have survived.
We live in global in-betweenness these days. We live between pre-corona and post-corona days, looking forward anxiously to a time when the virus will be eradicated or controlled, and we can return to our normal lives, including worship together in a shared space. Some – far too many – literally live between death and life during these in-between times, relying on machines even to breathe. Their loved ones, unable to be with them, caress them, or see or talk to them directly, live in a cruel limbo as well. And our courageous, dedicated health-care providers live in the unpredictable in-betweenness of knowing they are exposing themselves every day to this lethal virus, and waiting to learn if they, too, have fallen victim to it. The same is true for the people who fill our grocery shelves and deliver our mail. Mr. Rogers told us to “look for the helpers,” and they are everywhere, voluntarily and faithfully living in a Holy Saturday world, an in-between world.
Our “new normal” will be different in ways that we can’t yet imagine or predict, but just as our faith gets us through the sadness, emptiness, and upheaval of this Holy Saturday, so, too, will it get us through this time of pandemic. We will emerge into a new landscape as a stronger, more loving, more whole people, just as Jesus’s followers did 2,000 years ago on Easter morning. God walks beside us on this liturgical Holy Saturday, this Sabbatum Sanctum. Even in despair and fear, the disciples were not alone, and neither are we. As a people of faith, today we wait for the resurrection of Jesus, and I am convinced our faith will strengthen us as we wait for an end to the pandemic that has so dramatically and tragically changed our lives.
Let us pray together,
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: As we live through this time between death and life, as we mourn the pain of crucifixion and the death your Son suffered, as we contemplate his body laid in the tomb, grant that we will know the solace and consolation of our faith. Grant that on this day when we mourn in limbo, we will be strong enough to recognize your Son when he greets the women in the garden on the third day. Help us to understand the sacrifice that is your love, so that we will know ever more fully the love you send us in your beloved Son. May we rise with him from our grief into the newness of life. We pray this in the name of the one who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.